


The world about to end

by Fatale (femme)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-28
Updated: 2006-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere down the lone highway, a truck stuttered to life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The world about to end

**Author's Note:**

> Someone dared to me write fat!Dean. So.

Egh, done with my [](http://spn-holidays.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_holidays**](http://spn-holidays.livejournal.com/) fic. I am fairly certain [](http://merepersiflage.livejournal.com/profile)[**merepersiflage**](http://merepersiflage.livejournal.com/) wanted schmoopy future-fic, but my brain kept making Dean fat and crazy.

Thanks to [](http://hansbekhart.livejournal.com/profile)[**hansbekhart**](http://hansbekhart.livejournal.com/) , who hates betating but read over this anyway, and to [](http://janissa11.livejournal.com/profile)[**janissa11**](http://janissa11.livejournal.com/), who has more writerly mojo in her little finger than I've got in my whole lazy-ass body.

 

 

The world about to end  
Future!fic, Dean/Sam  
Rated: PG  
WC: 1860

 

 

 

It was summer and his tomatoes were coming in nicely. In a few days, they'd be red and fresh, ready to add a dash of color to his arugula.

He squatted down with great effort to feel the leaves, made sure the plants were getting enough water. The sun beat down on his back and tiny beads of sweat gathered over his lip, which he wiped off with the back of one dry, cracked hand.

Somewhere down the lone highway, a truck stuttered to life.

Road to nowhere, Dean liked to call the highway that bisected his property. Maybe two cars passed each day, and usually only by accident - it was the precise reason he'd chosen this place to live.

People settled like dust; they fluttered about and eventually stopped, always meaning to move on, until they woke up and realized it had been years since they'd last moved and it was just easier to stay put.

Dean scratched his belly where his shirt rode up over the sun-burned red flesh there. His pants didn't quite meet his shirt and left a large band of midsection bare to the mercy of the afternoon sun. He didn't have any clothes that fit well; they are all a solid three sizes too small, but he didn't like the idea of going into town for new ones.

_Like dust._

Down the street, the truck was getting closer.

 

***

 

The house was small and squatty, sides more weathered than the man within. The gravel driveway crunched under his feet.

For a moment, Sam thought it must have been left that way on purpose. Dean would want to be able to hear company before they got close to the door.

Once he walked up to the house, he revised that thought. The door was propped open by bricks with grass growing through them. A rusted screen door on its last leg and Dean inside, sleeping.

"Dean," Sam said, feeling like all the dirt of the road had settled into his throat.  
Inside, Dean snored.

"Dean," Sam said, raising his voice. When he didn't get a response, he pushed the door open and stepped through.

 

***

 

He used a broken piano stool for an end table and when he woke up, he automatically reached for the $5 reading glasses he kept there.

"Jesus," he said, fumbling with them and finally managing to haphazardly slap them on his face. "Jesus," he swore again and sat up straighter.

Behind his glasses, he squinted at the figure sitting across from him. "Sam?" he said, his voice scratchy from disuse. Hallucinations were common in heat like this. Probably he was going to have a heart attack and die out here alone. He'd been looking forward to his tomato crop this year.

Sam flinched like he'd been shot.

If he was going crazy and hallucinating this whole thing, it was pretty thorough, because Sam looked good: tall, lean, a little older than he remembered, but relaxed and comfortable in his own skin.

He didn't look happy right now, though. He wasn't saying anything about Dean's state, but Dean picked self-consciously at his ragged jeans. They didn't button around his middle anymore; he'd passed that up a couple of years ago.

Dean didn't like this hallucination. This Sam looked at him with eyes gone soft with pity, and mouth pressed into a thin, harsh line.

"Don't," Dean said to the Sam sitting across from him. "Don't look at me."

"Dean," Sam said.

"Look away."

The Sam averted his eyes and Dean could breathe properly again.

"What happened to you?" the Sam said and licked his lips nervously, a nervous gesture carried over from childhood.

Now that Sam wasn't looking at him, Dean had the chance to drink him in, his profile, the sharp slope of his nose, his chin, his cheeks. Dean's eyes raced over his face, desperate to remember Sam this time, not to lose him like last time when he'd forgotten.

One day, many years after Sam had gone back to school and Dean had settled, he'd realized with a grasping and empty feeling that he couldn't really remember Sam. The feeling was there: fierce love accompanied by aching, hollow emptiness, but nothing solid for him to hold onto, no memory or event that he could point to, relive, and know, this is where it went wrong, this is where I lost him.

He was so distracted, he didn't catch Sam's question the first time he asked it. The second time, he flinched.

_What happened to you, Dean?_

"You," he answered.

 

***

 

"Do you want to go for a walk?" Sam asked after an uncomfortable long while had passed. He looked around the room. A clock on the cracked mantle ticked on occasion, but not enough to keep time. Like everything else, it seemed half-broken, existing in this negative space Dean had surrounded himself with.

"Already walked," Dean said, his voice husky and low.

He was nearly unrecognizeable with at least a year's growth of beard on his face, the added weight, the tired, defeated slump of his shoulders. But his voice was - it still a jolt of heat through his belly at the sound.

"God," Sam said, "what do you do here all day?"

Dean didn't answer. He rocked back and forth in his chair.  
"Do you eat?" Dean asked suddenly.

"Well, yes."

The answer seemed to amuse Dean.

"Good," he said and started rocking again.

 

***

 

Dean had always been a good cook, but Sam was surprised how good his dinner was.

"How do you get food?" Sam asked curiously.

"I pay a kid from town to bring it to me," Dean said.

"Oh - where do you get the money?"

"Saved it," Dean said. "Lots of money. You used to send me money."

"Yes," Sam said, "until you left without telling me where you'd gone."

"You were already gone," Dean said, toying with his fork like he'd forgotten its use.

"I was in school," Sam said and put down his fork, dinner forgotten.

"You left."

"Not you, never you," Sam swore. "I looked for you, but it took me this long to track you down." He stood up, rounded the table, moving towards Dean cautiously.

Dean didn't even look up, he was busy staring at Sam's empty place setting.

"I didn't think it was right, what we were doing," Sam said, trying to make Dean understand. He pawed at Dean's arm, fingers brushing over cotton worn thin enough to nearly be transparent. "I was wrong.”

 

***

 

That night, he crept into the living room where Sam slept sprawled uncomfortably over the worn couch. In a shaky whisper, he told Sam about how the wind blows over the dust at night and sounds like weeping, about how he'd made himself forget for so long and then tried to remember, but couldn't.

He told Sam about how _sorrys_ became shadows and nothing really mattered.

When the sun peeked into the dingy windows, he went back to bed without waking Sam and wondered when he began to think of this man as his brother.

 

***

 

"I gave up," Dean said over breakfast.

Sam stopped eating and leaned in toward Dean, as if he was saying something of great importance.

“One day," Dean continued doggedly, looking like he wished he hadn't begun, "I woke up and couldn’t do it anymore.”

"I know,” Sam said, his voice choked and full of something he didn't want to think about. He’d missed this, missed Dean with a fierceness that he’d only fully realized upon seeing him again.

"Yes, you would," Dean said. There was meaning there, but damned if Sam could figure it out.

Over the past couple days, he'd gotten strangely used to Dean's quirks, the weird silences, the way he'd look at Sam like he had no clue who he was.

"I want you to come back with me," Sam said.

"Oh, really?" Dean said, the odd half-smile back, like he was laughing at a joke only he understood. "To where?"

"Back," Sam said firmly. "This-" he gestured at the dilapidated surroundings "- isn't healthy."

"Why're you here?" Dean asked, staring at some blank space on the wall. "I want Sam."

"Dean," Sam said, suddenly finding it hard to breathe, "I'm here, man. I'm right here." He blinked against the stinging in his eyes. "God, Dean, look at me. Please, Dean. _Please._ "

 

***

 

When Dean ended up at Sam's side, fevered confession pouring out of him in a jumbled, sloppy whisper, Sam was waiting. He turned over and pulled Dean onto the too-small couch with him. He held him until his arms ached, then he held on that much tighter.

Dean blinked against him, eyelashes brushing against Sam’s cheek like a trapped butterfly.

"Remember me," Sam said fiercely, unsure whether it was a plea or an order or a prayer.

He felt the moment Dean shifted, clicked into place. It was like his vision of the world had been a little skewed, off-kilter, and he'd not had a name for it until now, when everything had righted itself and for the first time, he was steady, like he could walk without crumpling to the floor.

He felt like crying with relief. Instead, he held Dean like he'd never let go.

"Sam?" Dean asked, mouth pressed into Sam's sweat-damp skin. "Sammy."

"Yes."

The past was a broken thing and there wasn’t any going back for either of them, but Sam was lucky, he had Dean and he had somewhere to go from here.

 

***

 

In the morning, they checked on Dean's plants together. They were wilted, so Sam pulled the hose from the back of the house and watered them until the ground was soaked all the way through.

Once inside, Sam shuffled Dean into the bathroom, where he found an old razor and shaved away the months of growth.

Beneath the whiskers, Dean's skin looked older with a network of unfamiliar lines around his eyes, more fragile, paper-thin, like the past twenty years had stripped away the last traces of his youth and laid down tracks and scars that would mark him for the rest of his days.

But his tired skin still hummed beneath Sam's hands and the curve between his neck and shoulder tasted exactly like he remembered. The bow of his lips - still soft and achingly familiar - felt like coming home.

He did not ask Dean to leave with him again, and sometimes Dean looked through rather than at him, and the mantle clock ticked only occasionally to punctuate the seconds.

 

 


End file.
